


Godzilla take your mask off

by Dragon_wolf



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Protective Siblings, gaming the system, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragon_wolf/pseuds/Dragon_wolf
Summary: Older sisters aren’t immune to nightmares.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Godzilla take your mask off

Candace knew how fast and skilled her little brothers were at building things wildly out of proportion of what a child should be able to build. It was a source of pride for her, and if she wasn't as obsessed with getting them into trouble she might have shown it more. She loved her brothers after all. 

The thing stretched far above their house and possibly the entire town didn't feel like something they would build. It was cold, menacing, it's edges jagged and dark. It's construction looked crooked and cruel, quite unlike anything she'd seen from the boys in her memory. Their inventions were made for fun. This thing was quite the opposite. 

As dangerous as she'd considered their inventions on the daily, this may have been the first time she'd felt quite this much fear of one before. It creaked as it moved in a way metal giants in movies would, it's enormous metal legs moving unnaturally. Noise of wrenching metal dominated the air. 

She was in her backyard. She wasn't sure where this thing came from but suddenly it was all she could see, stretching impossibly up into the sky. She had no voice to call for her parents with, not that she exactly knew where they were. She found no wish to tattle within herself, replaced with all consuming dread. And anyway, the thing wasn't actually in the backyard with her, it's many legs were positioned in every direction into town, lifting and descending with noise of carnaged buildings accompanying it. 

Her brothers were here too. They were some meters away from her, similarly staring up at the metal giant above with some sort of wonder. They seemed in awe, more curious than afraid. Fixated on the awful spectacle. 

A metal leg closest to them lifted, almost too slowly, earth and rubble falling away from it with so much noise, but too fast at the same time as suddenly it was up all the way and already starting it's arc down. Plunging with merciless speed towards the ground. 

Towards their backyard. Towards them.

There wasn't much time to get away but Candace found she couldn't move. There was a noise all around her and it was hard to tell if it was in her head or not, wrenching metal coming too fast for her to force herself to even cry out. 

Not for herself. For her brothers, who were still there, who wouldn't have enough time to run even if they started as soon as the foot started going down. 

For a moment noise engulfed her thoughts. There might have been screaming.it might have even been her own, but she knew it wouldn't make a difference now. She couldn't see for her eyes wretched closed by themselves and she felt herself fall into the swirl of dust and rubble as the metal leg came down. 

There was nothing for a few moments. The noise died down to a slow trickle of small loose ruble and she felt the dust settle gently around her. There was darkness but mostly it was because she had her eyes shut tight. She didn't dare open them for a solid minute as the last of the noise slowed to a stop and she was overtaken by dead silence. 

Her eyelids were heavy and coated with dust and cooperated slowly as she tried to open them. The sight that greeted her was grim. 

Most of the space in front of her was occupied by a giant metal column, grand and unmoving. Rust peppered some places on it, and the entire thing was dark and jagged and menacing to look at. 

It took up almost the whole space, missing her by just a couple of meters. 

Her brothers were nowhere to be seen. 

She tried to yell but her voice still wouldn't come. She tried to jump up and run to the metal monstrosity, or home, or somewhere, but most she could manage was a crawl, her legs weak and about to give out under her. She tried to rage against the unforgiving metal, to scream for her brothers, but what happened was she slumped against the thing and sobbed. It was deathly cold and unyielding. She knew there was nothing she could do. Her brothers were gone. 

She managed to hit the metal weakly a few times as she slithered down towards the ground. It mostly hurt her to do it. Sobs wracked her body violently.

It was possible that they got away, she told herself as her sobs subsided a bit. It's possible. But looking down at the ground she didn't believe herself. Through the blur of teary vision she saw the beginnings of a dark stain slowly emerge from the rim of the metal column. 

She wrenched her eyes shut and her mind turned itself off. It hurt. 

It hurt so much. 

… 

When she came to again it was quiet and dark and she was in her bedroom. Her eyes felt sore and puffy and her cheeks were vaguely wet. It took her a moment to remember exactly why she'd been crying. 

She did remember though. Probably in more detail than she wanted. Fresh tears trickled gently down her face as she checked that everything was fine. She was in bed. Her room was dark, save for the digital clock shining a cruel 4:13am at her. Looking outside she saw no ruined backyard and no nightmare robot in the sky in any direction she could see. In fact the sky was completely clear, the stars twinkling their joyful little lights at her, unobscured.

The house was quiet, fittingly for quarter past 4 in the night. She was the only one up, and the only noise came from her stifled sobbing, muffled by her hands over her face. It was only a nightmare, but the memory felt like something real. Even if it wasn’t by something of their own creation, god knows she’d seen things around that they claimed no ownership of that were about as pleasant to encounter as a wild tiger, her brothers could get hurt, potentially killed. It was on her, as their older sibling, to prevent something like that happening, but what if it really was like that thing from her dream? What would she be able to do in that situation? She’d not be able to protect anyone, not even herself let alone her brothers.

It took some time for the renewed waterfall of tears to slow to something resembling a stop, even though her face was still wet. It hurt to breathe slightly but it was manageable. 

She got out of bed. She knew the whole thing was a dream but she had to check that everything was actually fine for her nerves to calm down at least a bit. The house was dead silent now and with dawn still some time away navigation it was hard but, using her phone as a light she made her way to her brothers’ room. Luckily the door didn’t creak as she pushed it gently open and peered inside. 

The room was just as dark as hers, even down to a glowing digital clock in betwixt the two beds. She could see the vague shapes of her sibling in their beds, soundly asleep, unsurprisingly for the time of night, Ferb holding Perry close in his sleep and Phineas curled around bunched up blankets. The most important part though was that they were both completely fine. Alive. Breathing. Peacefully asleep and seemingly having at least neutral dreams.

Candace let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. A weight on her chest lightened and she felt just tired. She did get around 4 hours of sleep at most and the sleep she had was as far from quality as it could get. Going back seemed like the best idea, but then again the prospect of returning to that dream seemed particularly awful and resting wasn’t worth it. She backed out of the room and closed the door gently.

Her room felt cold. The blankets didn’t help and she suspected the chill was more internal anyway. Closing her eyes for longer than a minute or so felt bad on the account of bad memories and keeping them open felt bad due to exhaustion. Quite a lose - lose situation.

A small weight hitting her bed snapped her out of her thought cycle. Lifting her head revealed the clock, showing 5 am on it, and the vaguely bread loaf shape of Perry. The little platypus was making his way towards her from the side of the bed, where he presumably jumped up onto it. His face couldn’t be described as concerned, but he gave the vibe of worry anyway. Normally she wouldn’t even let him stay but right now she wasn’t opposed to some company. Specifically one that wouldn’t tell anyone she’d been weeping in the night over nightmares. Yeah, it would be nice. 

“Oh, Perry” She sat up and pet him on the head gently “They’re so stupid” whether she was reffering to her dreams or her brothers wasn’r exactly clear to her either “what am i going to do...”

The platypus offered no reply, instead just leaning into the pets. 

“I know, i know” she continued “It’s not like a giant death robot is more likely to appear than a satellite is to fall out of the sky, and i can’t do anything about that either, but… it’s just so….” she didn’t finish, but it felt like she’d gotten the point across. Or she would have if anyone other than Perry were listening. Presently the platypus just trodded over to her legs and dropped his brick of a body onto them, a small warm weight on her ankles. It made her smile, just a bit.

"They did that videogame thing just a few days ago and i thought… i thought..." She thought they'd died then. Holding Phin's body for just a moment before it disintegrated into pixels was one of the most mortifying and possibly the worst experience of her life. Everything was fine, of course, but it hurt so much then, and now that dream… she sighed. 

“you don’t worry about such things, huh, boy?” she scratched him gently under the bill “no death machines on your mind. Wish i had your life…. though, actually, maybe not. Tried it out once and it wasn’t great. No offence”

Perry took no offence to that. Just cooed sleepily to her, curling up.

Candace let herself sink into her bedsheets. The small warm loaf of a platypus on her legs provided just enough comfort to battle the chill she felt. Maybe she would borrow him from the boys more often. Yeah, that sounded fair. 

She finally felt well enough to sleep. And thankfully she had no dreams this time. Maybe tomorrow she would think about not trying to tattle on her brothers, but just making sure they were ok. Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> I have binged most of PnF content in about a week trying to battle my fatigue and it helped, now i am obsessed with it. I love my boys so much and i enjoy when Candace actually visibly worries about them. Also Perry is a good boy, he might be a loaf but he comfort you.


End file.
